2mm North East Area Group

Wednesday, 2 November 2016

Time to start on a new layout. After Brafferton, I want a bit of a change; a smaller layout and a different era.Hull Bridge will be a Hull and Barnsley layout set in the early c20th. Hull Bridge itself is a fictitious location and supposes that the H&BR built another small goods yard just east of Sculcoates goods station, on the opposite side of the River Hull. It will be urban in nature with ranges of warehousing and goods handling facilities.

I already have a baseboard, built with foamboard, that was originally intended for a BR blue layout subsequently aborted as James lost interest in model railways. I have successfully used this technique for baseboard construction before on Masham.I have also decided to go back to basics, so the trackwork is all copperclad soldered construction and of necessity I will have to scratchbuild/kitbash much of the stock. The buildings will be generally of card construction with brickpaper rendering.So far I have developed a track plan and applied this to the existing baseboard. I have made a start on track work with some lengths of plain track and one crossover manufactured. ]

I have yet to finalise the scenic features and would welcome any input on the nature of the buildings and any photographic examples that might help me along.As always, any comments are more than welcome.

Sunday, 2 October 2016

The picture shows a reduced number of NEAG members (Due to Wigan show and other abstractions...!) being guided through the topic for the day by Martin.

In addition to the innovative design of templates for constructing turnouts using flat bottomed rail Martin also displayed early examples of his laser cut servo mounting plates, and described the more expensive 3D printed versions which he does not recommend. He also had with him some interesting pieces of kit for controlling servos (MERG ones) and some very reasonably priced relays for changing crossing polarity. All together quite an interesting afternoon.

I've not placed any pictures here but there will be some eventually because as can be seen our own 2mm Magazine Editor was present and I understand there may be something in preparation for a future issue of the 2mm Magazine.

As aforesaid, while we were all enjoying the afternoon discussion/demo certain of our number were flying the flag at Wigan where as I understand things a sound decoder was purchased and fitted during the show. I'm hoping there may be some news of that here soon.

I have been conductiing my own experiments with sound and a small project type layout of very minimalistic proportions. I'll be posting some pictures here in the not too distant future so keep your eyes peeled...!

Tuesday, 27 September 2016

In the DistantNorth East Area Group meeting information.Saturday 1st October 2016St Barnabas Church Hall BournmoorTime -Please Note 2pm - 6.00pm.(approx.)(I've managed to get a notice out this time....!)

The next meeting of our group will be Saturday the 1st October. On Saturday we will be treated to a presentation and practical demonstration by Martin Stewart on the subject of turnouts using flat bottom rail. While working on his current layout ‘Ketton Cement’ Martin has developed a jig based
system that will enable anyone wanting to build modern points in a relatively short time.

In a nutshell it involves putting together a skeleton of soldered construction then filling in the spaces with laser cut sleeper bases - ‘simples’ as the meercats would say, but I’m not going to steal any more of Martin’s thunder - more next week. Suffice to say this is a sound development which Martin presented to those who attended the Forth and Clyde group Supermeet in Perth earlier this year. Martin has also developed some laser cut servo mounting plates which look just the job for easily mounting servos beneath the baseboard for turnout, signal or any other kind of remotely operated novelty you might wish to install on your layout. I have asked him to bring some along on Saturday.

Saturday, 4 June 2016

The NEAG meeting today was a collaborative effort with me showing a couple of my current small projects and three other group members giving us an account of what they've been up to lately.

The first picture shows yours truly laying my very first minimum space
layout on the table. The project is inspired by memories of the
transport of explosives to Callerton near Newcastle upon Tyne in the
late 1980s.

The second shot shows it at an early stage (last week...!)
before the one and only turnout on the layout was installed. The appendage to the right is not a crossbow, honest. It is my very
first attempt at a sector plate. I'm quite looking forward to getting on
with this micro layout and will put some update on here as soon as
there's anything worthy of showing.

Item number two in the afternoon listings was Alan Whitehouse who
outlined the story behind "Fine Scale in 48 Hours" where he and I
constructed a layout at Railex in Aylesbury over the 48 hours from
Friday to Sunday evening last weekend.

Edward Sissling followed this by demonstrating the assembly of his
latest project Ripley Ville Goods. The superstructure is Combitech, a
product sold by Edward through the hobby and craft section of his family
business. This is Combitech if anyone is interested
http://www.acsissling.com/hobby-craft/combitech-tubular-baseboard-construction-system

The final presentation of the afternon was by Rod McCall
who showed us how he has been manipulating the 2mm Scale Association
turnout kits to prodce all manner of different geometry from standard
kit parts, plus his own scratch built examples using 2mm Scale
Association parts

Above is a curved from a straight B9 and below a fully ballasted completed example.

Sunday, 20 December 2015

At the latest NEAGget together we were all given an interesting and
informative insight into Templot. Keith Armes travelled from Manchester
to give us the benefit of his knowledge and experience with the program.
The view above shows his attentive audience.

And...here we see the focus of our attention with Keith, seated to the left of the laptop and projector, describing that which is on the screen. It would have been a mammoth (if not impossible) task to tell us everything about Templot in the time available at a NEAG meeting but everyone agreed this was a useful exercise and since the program is a free download and relies upon donations, it costs nothing at all to try it out.

Graham Eason's little shop was also present.

Tea up....!

The ladies in the kitchen from the left, Fiona, Gerry, Margaret, Gilda and Audrey

And lastly - Yvonne was in the kitchen but here 'snapped' waiting to serve the corned beef pie.

Thank you ladies for another year of grand catering.

Worthy of note; with the end of 2015 Yvonne celebrates 25 years continuous catering for the NEAG. Thank you very much from us all.

Sunday, 5 July 2015

Well, that's a bit rich when I didn't even publish a notice of the meeting..! Holidays and other matters meant I never got round to it.

Saturday the 4th July was the date at our usual church hall venue. We were one month later than normal because of the aforementioned holiday. This time was an all day session when nine of our group put together one of the new 2mm Scale Associationturnout kits. If we had not spent our usual time eating food and drinking tea nine people would have gone away with a working turnout.

We are not bothered about this - drinking tea/coffee and eating is a bonding exercise..!

In fact six people did complete the turnout unit - maybe minus check rails in some cases, two were within an hour of completing and one was some way further off. To be fair he did have some issues with his specs...!

But it won't stop him finishing the turnout.

The day provided some useful feedback and picked up a typo or two in the instructions, all of which will be fed back to 'ground control'. All in all, a successful day.

Here are some pictures that I took during the day.

Above - a general view with pictures of everyone who took part.

Above - part way through.

And the six virtually complete.

Some of those who took part were absolute beginners, i.e. the people at whom the kits are primarily aimed, and the builder of one of the kits completed had not attempted anything like this before. It has to be said, if you have a desire to build something then you'll have no trouble putting these together.

Saturday, 18 October 2014

There's not been an awful lot of activity on the NEAG blog of late so just to prove we're still about .........today we enjoyed a presentation by Dave Jones of DJModels.

This proved to be a very interesting and entertaining afternoon. By prior arrangement we were joined by members of the North East and Borders Area Group of the EM Gauge Society courtesy of Keith Smart. Well, there's a little bit of cross pollination here because being a member of the EM Gauge Society myself I have one foot in that camp too...!

There were 30 of us in total who heard Dave describe his overall philosophy in relation to production of models, principally locomotives, in 'N''OO' and 'O'gauges.

It goes without saying we all enjoyed the afternoon very much indeed and eagerly await the first offerings which will be the result of Dave's labours. He obviously knows a bit about the environment in which model manufacturers find themselves.

Above is a picture taken during the course of Dave's presentation. Not many of our speaker's continue after tea, but Dave did and that, I think, shows the interest that exists within not only our group but also those who work in a different scale.